In the process of your research, you will come across many, many web pages that you'll find useful. In the old days, when you found books or articles during the research process, you wrote down the bibliographical information on a notecard and stored it away for future use. You can do the same thing with web pages you find...but there's now an easier way. Most web browsers have a built in "favorites" button, and you can use that to keep a record of the pages you like. But what happens if you're not on your home computer? You can't get to your favorites. New web products, such as Delicious.com, have solved this problem by providing an on-line location to save the addresses of pages you like--along with notes you might want to make to help you remember what you liked about the pages. These services are also "social," so you can share you bookmarks with others and you can search the bookmarks of others who are researching the same topic you are.
If you're interested in social bookmarking, you might find Diigo.com even better. Diigo lets you bookmark pages, just as you would do using Delicious, but it also lets you highlight parts of a saved page and add annotations (post-it notes) that will be saved for you for the next time you view the page. Since this is "social," what you highlight and annotate will be viewable by anyone else with a Diigo account (if you've added the note as "public"). You can also create a join bookmarking groups so you can view the bookmarks of others who share your interests or you can work collaboratively as a team on a research project, sharing as you go. Using Diigo requires that you install a Diigo toolbar on your browser, however, which Delicious does not.
If you're interested in social bookmarking, you might find Diigo.com even better. Diigo lets you bookmark pages, just as you would do using Delicious, but it also lets you highlight parts of a saved page and add annotations (post-it notes) that will be saved for you for the next time you view the page. Since this is "social," what you highlight and annotate will be viewable by anyone else with a Diigo account (if you've added the note as "public"). You can also create a join bookmarking groups so you can view the bookmarks of others who share your interests or you can work collaboratively as a team on a research project, sharing as you go. Using Diigo requires that you install a Diigo toolbar on your browser, however, which Delicious does not.
An introduction to Delicious and how it might be useful for research (Alan November)
What is "Social bookmarking"? How does it work? How can it be useful? (Common Craft)
Bookmarking AND annotating what you've found--the next step: Diigo
Using Diigo to save and annotate web pages
A comprehensive article on bookmarking (diigo, Google bookmarks, and others)(from Free Technology for Teachers)
Annotary--another, possible better, social bookmarking tool